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Using TLA+ in the Real World to Understand a Glibc Bug
TLA+ is a formal specification language that you can use to verify programs. It’s different from other formal verification systems in that it’s very pragmatic. Instead of writing proofs…
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 533 posts.
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macOS 11 boot volume layout
A complete guide to the structure and layout of APFS startup disks from High Sierra to Big Sur (Intel), together with tear-out PDF charts.
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The Heart of RISC-V Development Is Unmatched
Today, SiFive introduces the new HiFive platform for professional RISC-V developers, the HiFive Unmatched! The HiFive Unmatched enables developers to create the RISC-V-based software they need for RISC-V platforms. From real-time operating systems to custom Linux distributions, and the compilers, libraries, and…
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What's in a Linux Executable?
Executables have been fascinating to me ever since I discovered, as a kid, that they were just files. If you renamed a .exe to something else, you could open it in notepad! And if you renamed somet...
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Microsoft: No Driver Updates Allowed for Win7 and Win8
Microsoft has announced that it is ending the ability to cross-sign drivers, effective 1 July 2021. This will effectively make it impossible to release new or updated drivers for Windows 7, Windows…
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On Abandoning the X Server
There's been some recent discussion about whether the X server is abandonware. As the person arguably most responsible for its care and feed...
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Grafana Tempo, a scalable distributed tracing system
Tempo is designed to be a robust trace id lookup store whose only dependency is object storage (GCS/S3).
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Fedora 33
Today, I’m excited to share the results of the hard work of thousands of contributors to the Fedora Project: our latest release, Fedora 33, is here! This is a big release with a lot of change, but I believe all that work will also make it a comfortable one, fulfilling our goal of bringing you […]
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How you could have come up with Paxos yourself
In the field of computer science, the Paxos algorithm is notorious for how difficult it is to understand. I had to learn the Paxos algorithm in my distributed systems class. I even have "implemented" it by translating Leslie Lamport's TLA+ to Python. But I didn't understand it until much much later.
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ReactOS (Free and Open Source Windows): Jérôme Gardou hired to work full-time
ReactOS is a free, opensource reimplementation of windows
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We chose Java for our high-frequency trading application
In the world of High-Frequency Trading, automated applications process hundreds of millions of market signals every day and send back…
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Improving Postgres Connection Scalability: Snapshots
Improving connection scalability in Postgres 14. From the neat to the gritty: snapshot scalability edition.
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Geeking Out with UEFI
Some people may think some of my past posts get into the weeds, exploring the technical depths of Windows Autopilot, Intune, Windows 10, ConfigMgr, etc. But I would say those generally only g…
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Porting Firecracker to a Raspberry Pi 4 (2019)
Since we got our hands on the new Raspberry Pi 4, we started exploring how various virtualization technologies behave on the board. First thing we tried is how to run Nabla on it and how it compares to native KVM. Next thing we wanted to try is firecracker, the notorious micro-VMM that Amazon Lambda & Fargate run…
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Four features that justify a new Unix shell
On a lobste.rs thread about the rationale for the Fennel language, I posted this summary of why Oil exists:
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Logs, Tails, Long Tails (2013)
Learn the shape of the logs of probability distributions, and you’ll be able to guess how they behave.
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The Importance of End-to-End Thinking in System Design
I once attended a talk by Yoky Matsuoka when I was young – so young, in fact, that I don’t remember when or where the talk was. What I do remember is her telling the story of designing…
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BPF, XDP, Packet Filters and UDP
Documentation and guides from the team at Fly.io.
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NetBSD 9.1
After a small delay * , the NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 9.1 , the first feature and stability maintenance release of the netbsd-9 stable branch.
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Fast UTF-8 validation
One of the most common "data type" in programming is the text string. When programmers think of a string, they imagine that they are dealing with a list or an array of characters. It is often a "good enough" approximation, but reality is more complex. The characters must be encoded into bits in some way. Most ……
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The surprising impact of medium-size texts on PostgreSQL performance
Why TOAST is the best thing since sliced bread
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Galileo's Ground Segment Problem
The European Global Navigation Satellite System Galileo has recently been suffering from frequent "almost disruptions", most likely partially due to Corona, and possibly also due to Brexit, but in any case due to some historical stinginess. Before I explain what is going on, I should hasten to say that most days of…
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How Does a C Debugger Work? (2014)
Debugging, GNU± Linux and WebHosting and ... and ...
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So you want to build an embedded Linux system?
(Heads up — this article was published in October 2020. Much of the general discussion is still relevant, but many of these SoCs are getting quite long in the tooth, and some of the software issues mentioned here have been addressed)
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LDM: My Favorite ARM Instruction
LDM—or load multiple —is my favorite assembly instruction of the ARM instruction set. Here’s why.
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Oldschool Gaming on FreeBSD
When was the last time you played a computer game? I really like one of Benjamin Franklin quotes – “We do not stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.̶…